Specialty lenses

So far we've mostly been looking at fairly everyday lenses, but there are lots…of other optical gizmos that you can attach to your camera to achieve all sorts of effects.…You can get strange effects, or stylized effects, or even some practical effects.…You're already seen a fisheye lens and how it gives you a very wide and very…distorted view of a scene. On the more practical end of the spectrum are macro…lenses, which allow you to shoot extreme close-ups of objects.…Technically what makes a macro a macro lens is that there is a one-to-one…relationship between the size of the object that you're shooting and the size of…the image that gets captured.…

I'm going to skip all the math bit and we'll just say that when you shoot with a…macro lens you can shoot close-ups and get perspectives that you just can't…shoot with non-macro lenses.…Like other lenses macro lenses come in a variety of focal lengths.…This is a 100mm macro, but you might also see 60 and 50 millimeter macro lenses.…Those shorter macro lenses are lighter and they're less expensive, but they…

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Released

2/11/2011

Many of the creative options available to a photographer hinge on an in-depth understanding of lenses. In Foundations of Photography: Lenses, Ben Long shows how to choose lenses and take full advantage of their creative options. The course covers fundamental concepts that apply to any camera, such as focal length and camera position, and shows how to evaluate and shop for DSLR lenses. The second half of the course focuses on shooting techniques: controlling autofocus, working with different focal lengths, and managing distortion and flare. The course also examines various filters and contains tips on cleaning and maintaining lenses.